Peter Voorhees

College News

News Release

New Exhibit at Tompkins County Public Library Features Tompkins Cortland Student Work

September 24, 2014

A new exhibit on display at the Tompkins County Public Library features work done by a digital photography class at Tompkins Cortland Community College. Montage Histories: Tompkins County, New York through Photographs 1864-2014 features images of sites in Tompkins County, both as they appeared in the 1860s and how they look today. The exhibit, which is part of the celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Tompkins County Public Library, runs now through December 30. An opening reception will be held Friday, September 26 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the library at 101 East Green Street in Ithaca.

The show features the work of students in Assistant Professor Harry Littell’s Spring 2014 Advanced Digital Photography class. Littell, who is the chair of the College's photography program, had students create photomontages that combined historic photographs of significant buildings, places, and landscapes with current ones they took of the same locations. The students chose archival images from the History Center in Tompkins County, found and photographed the same view, and then combined them in a montage that highlighted aspects of the past in a contemporary context.

Twenty-three pieces of work are on display as part of the exhibit at the library. An exhibit catalogue was created featuring these images and additional pieces created by Littell and his students. The catalogue also includes descriptions of each image, providing a historical narrative as well as details on each featured location. The text in the catalogue was researched and written by Bret Leraul and Christine Yao, graduate students at Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities.